Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Being this is the last day of session, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to highlight some of the events that are going to be taking place in Inuvik and the Beaufort-Delta during the summer, but before I do that I want to express, on behalf of some of the Members who went to Hay River last night, our appreciation to the organizers of the Hay River Track and Field Meet for their hospitality. It was a great event, one that we always support and I think the kids appreciate that.
The one memory that stood out, though, was at the opening ceremonies, without prompting, you had close to 900 kids belting out O Canada as loud as they can. That was really something to see. It made you proud to be from the NWT and proud to be Canadian when you see our young people doing that without prompting.
We’re also working on a four by 100 relay team for next year. I think they meant 400 metres, not 100 feet. So we’ll have to do a little bit of training. We’ll have tryouts and whoever can survive 100 feet is on the team.
Okay, that part of it is done. I want to talk about some of the events that are going on. Again, as Mr. Speaker pointed out, today is the 30th anniversary of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement and they’ve done a fantastic job preserving the Inuvialuit culture and giving the Inuvialuit opportunities to succeed. They have an excellent post-secondary school support program, as do the Gwich’in. I think we have fantastic post-secondary school programming in the Northwest Territories, supported by our Aboriginal government.
Also this summer in Inuvik is the Inuit Circumpolar Council will be holding their annual general meeting, I believe, July 21st to the 24th and we’ll have over 600 delegates from Alaska, Russia, the NWT and Canada and Greenland and this is a good opportunity again. It’s going to be a fun time to see the cultures of all the other Inuit people from across the circumpolar world and this started out in, I think, 1977 they had their first meeting in Barrow and it just built upon this.
So we’re looking forward to that. Their theme this year is “One Arctic, One Future” and as my colleague from Boot Lake pointed out, the Aurora College grad we had just recently and we congratulate all those that have graduated, and I think the Premier pointed out that there was only one male amongst all the graduates. So the ladies have done a fantastic job and a lot of them do it raising families, too, which makes it that much more incredible. So hats off to them.
East 3 grad is happening and my colleague and I… Well, he said it’s going to happen tomorrow. So he and I are going to show up tomorrow. We’ll be the only two there because it’s actually happening on Saturday. So we’ll wait till then, Mr. Moses.
Inuvik Petroleum Show is happening in June. Again, it’s another exciting opportunity for people in Inuvik, and even with the slowdown we still have a lot of industry people coming. We appreciate that.
The Gwich’in Assembly is taking place in Aklavik August the 19th to the 21st.
So I wanted to just highlight a few of the events that are taking place in Inuvik, and being that we’re just starting the summer I want to wish all my colleagues here a safe summer, and all the people back home, summer is a great time to get out with the family, enjoy what the Northwest Territories has to offer. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Lafferty.
